


Amor Fati

by Ruuger



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: seasonal_spuffy, Dark, F/M, Future Fic, Shanshu Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is your life, William Pratt, and it's ending one minute at a time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amor Fati

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Seasonal Spuffy.
> 
> Thanks to menomegirl for the beta.

The phone was ringing again.

For a few seconds Spike tried to ignore the sound but when the ringing persisted, he reluctantly opened his eyes, cringing at the brightness of the morning light filtering through the curtains. He craned his head to see his mobile phone slowly make its way across the table, propelled by the vibrations of the ring tone. Spike sighed and rubbed his hand across his face before reaching out to catch the phone just as it took a plunge towards the wastepaper basket.

He knew without looking that the call would be from Giles. Seemed that these days the watcher was always calling to request his help for one obscure research project or another, and Spike was beginning to suspect that Buffy had put Giles up to it in some misguided attempt to make him feel useful. He had a vague recollection of hearing someone pounding on his door earlier, so whatever it was that Giles needed his help on this time, it must have been something more urgent than the usual translations and library excursions.

He glanced at the read-out and groaned.

 **You have (17) missed calls.**

Spike tossed the phone back on the table and carefully sat up on the couch. He waited until the room stopped spinning, then leaned his elbows to his knees, pushing the heels of his hands to his eye sockets in the hope of dulling the pounding inside his skull.

He had spent the previous evening in the pleasant company of his dear friends Jack Daniels and Jim Beam again, cursing Angel and his thrice-damned shanshu at anyone who would listen, and quite a few who wouldn't. The bar hadn't been on his original route home from work, but he'd run into Buffy while taking a shortcut through the park and things had led to other things, which had led to alcohol and eventually Spike waking up propped against his front door, missing one shoe and most of the contents of his wallet.

Buffy had been with Angel, of course, the two of them heading towards St. Mary's for a bit of slaying. Spike had offered to come and join them, but she'd given him her usual speech about it being too dangerous, about there being other ways that he could help now that he was... changed. She never used the word _human_ , as if the shanshu was some particularly embarrassing STD he'd caught. Because it turned out that Buffy really did need some monster in her man. He would have laughed at the irony if it hadn't hurt too much to even breathe.

Spike reached down between his knees to pick up the near-empty bottle of unlabelled bourbon from the floor and then chugged it down with one long draught, grimacing as the liquid burned his throat.

This is your life, William Pratt, and it's ending one minute at a time.

There was a knock on the door and for a few seconds Spike contemplated on pretending that he wasn't home, but the sound was making his head hurt, and so he chose the lesser evil and dragged himself to the door. He had been mentally preparing himself for the pitying look that Giles would give him when he saw him, and so when the door opened to reveal Buffy instead, Spike almost tripped over his feet in surprise.

"Buffy?"

The name felt odd on his lips after all these months of avoiding her, of biting his tongue to keep from calling it out when in bed with pretty little blonde girls whose real names he could never remember in the morning.

She was dressed like the night before - a tight sweater and tighter jeans, fashionable boots with impractical heels - but her clothes were torn and dirty now, not just the ordinary wear and tear of patrol, but covered in grime and almost shredded in places. It must have been raining outside because she was soaking wet, but more than that she was soaked in blood, dark red rivulets running down her face and neck from a gash somewhere under her hair. She was shivering, clutching her stake to her chest as she stood there with a lost look in her eyes.

"You're hurt," Spike said dumbly and reached out to help her, but stopped himself before touching her and just stepped aside allow her in. "Come... Come in."

Buffy wiped her face with the wet sleeve of her jacket, smearing blood across her cheeks. She stopped only few feet from the doorway, and as he closed the door, Spike absurdly realised that this was the first time that she had been to his apartment. She'd often asked to come around, but he had always found some excuse to keep her away.

He waited for her to speak first, but she remained silent, just staring at the wall as if in shock.

"Are you all right?" He asked, and then shook his head - a stupid question with a painfully obvious answer - of course she wasn't.

Again his hand hovered near her shoulder, but he didn't dare to touch her.

"What happened," he tried instead.

Her voice when she finally replied was small and quiet. "Angel's dead."

Spike had always assumed that if Angel died, he would know it, that he would feel it through some mystical blood bond even if he were all the way across the other side of the world. But of course, he wasn't a vampire anymore - just an ordinary human being with ordinary human senses - and he wanted to laugh at his presumption that any connection to his vampire self would have remained after his transformation, would have followed him to the silent and scentless cotton wool world that he now inhabited.

Suddenly he was possessed by the thought that the Buffy before him too was nothing but an insubstantial ghost - a drunken hallucination or a figment of the First, perhaps - when he couldn't hear her heartbeat, couldn't smell her blood or feel the slight tingling in his spine that used to tell him that she was near. He reached to touch her for reassurance, his fingers trembling as they briefly brushed against the wet pleather of her jacket.

She turned around, her lips twisting into a slight smile. "Still can't tell what's real, Spike?" She asked with casual cruelty and Spike found that even after all these years, it still hurt more that he could have ever imagined.

Angry tears burning in his eyes he turned away from her, because he was damned if he was ever going to let her see him cry again. "How did he die," he asked, his voice tight.

There was a clattering sound of her stake falling to the floor, and when he turned to look at her again, he saw that she was now standing by the cold and empty fireplace, hugging herself as she stared at the ashes.

His anger subsided at the sight of her and he grabbed a blanket from the couch.

"I- I’m sorry, you must be cold," he said, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, careful not to touch her more than necessary.

She pulled it around herself and then leaned back to his embrace, and Spike had to close his eyes and bite his lip to suppress the shudder that ran through him at her touch.

"We were ambushed. There's been a lot of vamp attacks at St. Mary's, so Angel thought we should check it out. It was nothing bad, though, so we didn't take any of the other girls along."

He staggered at the loss of contact when she suddenly pulled away from him and began pacing the room like a trapped animal.

"It was Drusilla," she said, briefly stopping to glance at him. "Her minions surronded us by the chapel. We tried to fight them, but there were too many and they tied us down and took us to Drusilla. Angel tried to talk to her, but she wouldn't listen. She kept going on about how he'd betrayed her, and how she was going to make a new family, and then she killed him."

"I'm sorry," Spike whispered, and realised that he was. Because for all their disagreements and differences, Angel was still family.

"She came back for you."

Her words struck him like a stake through the heart.

"She came back for you, and I couldn't let her have you, so I..." She looked up and there was something in her eyes that he hadn't seen for years, a darkness that brought chills down his spine. "I killed her."

Spike could feel the white noise building in his ears, and sat down on the armrest of his couch. Angel was dead, Drusilla was dead, and Buffy...

He looked at her. She was standing by the fireplace again, no longer pacing but unable to stand still, almost as if there was something trying to escape from under her skin.

And Buffy... Buffy was _his_ again, whispered the small treacherous voice in his head.

Because he might have been stripped of his vampire senses, but he could still recognise the look in her eyes, that deep desperate desire that he had learned to know so well during that year after she came back from heaven.

He shook his head, stopping himself before his thoughts would stray to paths where they were no-longer allowed.

She turned around and looked at him, eyes brimming with despair. "I didn't know where else to go. It's all so confusing, so bright. I don't know what to do." She rubbed her face with the back of her hand. "Help me."

He reached to brush away a strand of hair from her face, but she grabbed his wrist and stopped him. For a moment panic flared through him at the thought that he had crossed some line he wasn't supposed to cross anymore, but then she smiled, sliding her hand behind his neck.

"I've missed you," she whispered, and pulled him down for a kiss. She maneuvered them across the room, pushing him towards the narrow bed in the corner until his knees hit the edge of the mattress and he fell down on his back. She was still strong, stronger than him. Always stronger than him.

"Do you miss it?" She asked as she straddled him. "Do you miss being a vampire? Being immortal?" She leaned forward, her fingers making patterns on his skin as she ran her hands across his chest.

He wanted to say that he was happy the way he was now, finally free of the demon that had possessed his body for a hundred years, but that would have been a lie. He wanted to say that he missed his old self, missed the strength and the enhanced senses, wanted to tell her how he wished that he could fight on her side like he used to, but that would also have been a lie. The truth was somewhere in between, somewhere between the nights when he was tired of breathing and the sound of his own heartbeat drove him insane, and the days when the taste of food and the warm touch of sunlight on his skin left him drunk with joy.

So in the end he said nothing, his words lost in a desperate moan as she ground their bodies together. There was a part of him that wanted to tell her to stop, to tell her that he was different now - they were both different now - but then she leaned down to kiss his collar bone and suddenly he couldn't remember why he would ever have wanted to say such a thing.

"Do you want this," she asked when she sat up again, her hand dancing down his chest and between her legs, sliding under the waistband of his jeans.

"Yes," he whispered, the word catching in a shuddering breath as her fingers wrapped around his length. "God, yes."

She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. When they kissed, she tasted like rain and blood and dirt and Buffy and heaven and hell, and he wished that he didn't have to breathe, that the kiss could last forever. Holding on as long as he could, he finally pulled away with a gasp.

"Why are you here?" he asked, wincing at the pleading tone of his voice.

She gave him a curious look and then leaned down again, her hair ticking his face as she studied him. "To give you what you deserve, silly."

She was smiling now, a real smile that lit up her face like the morning sun. The kind of smile he had so rarely received from her, and when he looked at her, he knew he would sell his soul to be hers again.

"And what's that, love?"

Still smiling, she gently cupped his face between her hands and then kissed him again, her lips tracing a path across his cheekbones and down his neck, and he couldn't help thinking how strange it was to be like they were now, her hands cold against his feverish flesh; her heart so quiet when his own was beating so fast.

And then he felt it, the sharp pain - sharper than he remembered - as her fangs pierced his skin, and then the sinking feeling of his life being drained from him. He knew he should fight it, but by the time his body caught up with his brain it was already too late. There was blood on his lips, and slowly the world faded into darkness until all that was left was her whispered reply:

"One. Good. Day."


End file.
